Get ready to stop paying people to do Ogilvie calculations, recycle your Gearheart/Gerlach handouts, and delete your Frost Excel spreadsheet.[1] We’re about to go all “Beautiful Mind.”

Yesterday while at the Oakland WCAB an Applicant’s attorney mentioned he noticed an interesting trend in the Ogilvie formula. [2][3] He said that whenever he does an Ogilvie calculation for someone with a 100% earnings loss and a modest WPI, the WPI is always increased by 18. [4]

I ran a number of test calculations on this theory and it appeared to be right. My calculations show that up to a WPI of 44 the increase appears to always be 18.1, but the last “0.1” always gets rounded down. However, appearing to be right just isn’t good enough for me. And, because I am just truly that nerd, here’s the fully mathematical proof: